Learning to Love Again
by MadBangel
Summary: Because Gale deserved a better ending than the one he was given.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything that belongs to the Hunger Games. That is all the property of Suzanne Collins and Scholastic.

**Author's Note:** Somehow I always feel more for the one who isn't picked, rather than the one who is. This is my idea of what really happened to Gale after Mockingjay.

Gale's POV

There's a strong temptation to switch the television off when I see her face on the screen, hear her voice again for the first time in years. I should switch it off, for the sake of my mental health. But I don't. I haven't seen or heard from Katniss since I walked out and left her after our confrontation over Prim's death.

I know she married Peeta, and that they have two children. That she's as happy as she can be now, with them to help ease the scars of the war.

I leave the television on, and listen to Katniss speaking at a war memorial ceremony, because I am a masochist, and this is how I torture myself.

I can't see her again in real life. I know she doesn't want that. It would only be awkward. Whatever we once had is broken, shattered beyond all repair.

I guess I always knew she'd choose him. I used to know her better than anyone, and when I saw her on the screen with him during the 74th Hunger Games, I knew.

I didn't want to face it because I was in love with her, and held onto some desperate hope that maybe during all those hours we'd spent together in the woods she had felt the beginnings of the same for me.

But I've had a chance to turn it all over in my mind over and over again, for years, and I think I understand now.

I said Katniss would choose whoever she needed to in order to survive. And what she needed was life, not death. Bread, rather than a bow. She needed gentle, kind Peeta rather than a deadly killer with his stupid, fiery rants against the Capitol.

My Catnip never needed any help to be deadly. What she needed was someone to give her a reason to fight.

I thought that it was her and me against the world, but what I didn't know was that he had got to her first, before I even met her. With the bread.

She was never really mine from the moment I met her.

It doesn't make it any easier to bear, of course. I chose to stay here in District 2, about as far away from her as I can get. I took a job, to feed my family, who are the only things I have in the world.

They're the only thing I trust now. The bond of family is the only true one, anything else is breakable. That's what I learned from what happened with me and Katniss. I never thought I'd lose her completely, but I did, our four years of partnership dissolving into nothing in the end.

It's why I'll never marry. I could never trust anyone like that again. I don't have anything to offer, anyway. Didn't she teach me that? I have nothing but hate and bitterness inside me, for something that doesn't exist anymore. We won the war, the forces of evil that I railed against are gone, and I am now a rebel with nothing to rebel against.

I don't go hunting anymore. I don't need to do it, and I don't want to, because it reminds me of her.

I know my mother worries about me, despite my best efforts at appearing to be fine. But she knows as well as I do that Katniss is gone from our lives, and will never return.

I'm not alone here. A few other battle-scarred soldiers are around, and we support each other. Annie Odair knows what it is like to face the rest of your life without the person you love. Johanna Mason knows what it is like to have no one left to love. Beetee is long dead now, but he knew how to lose himself in his work, and it's what I do now.

War sometimes takes everything from you, and despite the loss of Katniss, I still have my mother, my two little brothers, Rory and Vick, and my baby sister Posy, who is all grown up and married now.

Katniss finishes speaking, and I watch her step down from the stage and join Peeta and her children. She is happy, and that's what's important.

I'll always regret the way things ended between us, but I have to accept that some things can't be fixed. I can't undo Prim's death. I can't tell her that I didn't shoot her when she asked because I understood better than her what the situation was at the time. That she wasn't being carried off to be tortured and killed.

I don't think I could have killed her anyway, even if I wanted to. But she will be angry at me still, if she ever thinks of me at all.

Suddenly Katniss looks directly into the camera, as if she's searching for someone, and my heart leaps a little, as our eyes lock, and I fool myself into thinking that she's looking for me. Then the camera cuts away from her and I switch the television off.

I've tortured myself enough for one night.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything that belongs to the Hunger Games. That is all the property of Suzanne Collins and Scholastic.

Katniss's POV

I see him now and again, on television. Like me, he's older now, but he's still Gale. Or maybe he isn't. We haven't seen or spoken to one another in years.

Maybe I don't know who he is anymore.

Gale isn't there anymore, in the locket Peeta gave me. My mother and Prim are on one side, and Peeta and our children are on the other.

I never really imagined that Gale would take a fancy Capitol job, but he still has his family to care for, and it beats spending all day down in the mines, I suppose.

Sometimes I feel a hint of regret when I think of him, but I try not to. Whatever we once were to each other we can never be again.

But it's bizarre that we know so many of the same people, people who are in contact with both of us, but we remain distant from each other, like there is a cold, solid wall of ice between us.

Gale probably thinks I don't want to know him anymore, after Prim's death. And I don't. I still feel sick every time I think about her death. A little voice at the back of my head whispers that it was Coin who killed Prim, not Gale, but I ignore it.

I don't want that voice to tell me that no matter how brutal Gale was against the enemy, he would never have done that to our own side, to our own children the way Coin did.

Perhaps I'm not mad at him for not shooting me when I asked him to, though. I was the only one who thought that was necessary, apparently.

Peeta has asked me about Gale, and whether I should reach out and make contact with him. But I always tell him that it wouldn't be the same ever again, and he leaves the subject alone.

I tried asking Johanna about him once, but she glared at me and told me that if I wanted to know how he was then I could ask him myself.

I try to stay away from the limelight as much as possible these days, but when I am asked to speak at a war memorial ceremony, I accept. Because I get to be me, just Katniss, no makeup, no stylists, no speeches.

I speak about all those who are in the pages of the book Peeta and I made. The ones we lost. And I think about Gale and how I lost him too, even though he's still alive.

I look out at the crowd, wondering if he might be there, somewhere. And then I look into the nearest camera, wondering if he is watching me right now, the way I've watched him.

I shake myself out of that thought. Even if he is watching, what does it matter? The girl and the boy from the woods are no more.

Peeta gives me a look that tells me he knows what I'm thinking, and I just take his hand and our children's and move away.

I can remember Gale as he was, how we were, and let the memory go.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** I don't own anything that belongs to the Hunger Games. That is all the property of Suzanne Collins and Scholastic.

Johanna's POV

Gale's got that look again. The one that tells me he's been thinking about her. She's probably been on television at that damn war memorial ceremony, getting teary as she remembers all the victims.

I don't go in for all that. The last thing I want is to remember it. I just want to forget every single thing that's ever happened to me since my name was drawn in the reaping all those years ago.

Gale has tried his best to stop me from becoming a morphling addict. He's mostly succeeded. Sort of. I live with him and his family, ever since the doctors said I couldn't live alone. We are miserable together.

There's nothing going on between us, of course. Gale is still too hung up on Katniss Princess Perfect Everdeen to ever notice me in that way.

I'm not bitter about that. Or maybe I am. It's hard not to resent the girl who came out of this with a loving husband, two kids, and about as normal and happy a life as a person can have who's been through what we have.

Katniss deserves it too. She really is that goddamned worthy. Not like me. Johanna Mason, evil stone-cold killer. She and Peeta are a good couple, and it's impossible to hate them.

I thought about going back to 7, but I have no one left there. And my doctors don't want me to live on my own, because I'm half-crazy. More than half, I reckon, but who's counting.

Gale's family are great, and it's been good living with them. The kids are grown up now, but when they were younger they brought a spark of life back to me, seeing their youth and innocence and knowing that they would never have to compete in the Hunger Games.

That neither Gale nor I nor any of our crew would ever allow that to happen.

Gale's been busy shoring up the basis of our new society so that the hell we lived will never return. It's a fight that never goes away, not really, and if I wasn't a head case I'd help him. The docs say I am not capable of it just yet.

Katniss asks me one day how Gale is, and I snap at her, because I hate seeing Gale being miserable and I know that she's the reason. She doesn't deserve to know how he is, because if she cared, she wouldn't have cut him out of her life.

A lot of girls are interested in him, but Gale has told me that he has no interest in marriage. I know the feeling. I can't imagine myself ever doing it either. Marriage is for those other people, the ones like Finnick and Annie or Katniss and Peeta. It's not for bitter, damaged wrecks who have nothing but the pain to keep themselves going.

I have it pretty good here, all considered. Gale's mother Hazelle is getting old now, and I look after her while Gale's at work. She reminds me a lot of my own mother, before she died, and she and I have a companionable relationship.

Then Gale gets home and after dinner Hazelle goes to bed and it's just the two of us. Just the way I like it. We talk about everything – his job, the battle to weed out the last of the Snow supporters, how the other members of the resistance are doing, how his little brothers and sisters are. Everything except Katniss, the elephant in the room.

Just before Hazelle dies, she makes me promise to look after Gale. It's ridiculous really – he's the one taking care of me. But I promise all the same. I'd do anything for Gale. He and his family have been everything to me and have finally given me someone to love again.

So I hold him while he breaks down over the loss of his mother, and I know that some of those tears are because Katniss has not showed up and I don't care. I am going to look after Gale, just as I promised.

I'm Johanna Mason, the girl from 7, and we know our trees. Gale is the strongest, tallest tree in the forest, the one that protects the others and allows the rest of the woods to bloom with life.

Maybe Katniss didn't know how to appreciate him, but I do. It's in the shade of his protection and care that I've allowed myself to put down roots and turn my face up to the sunlight again.

He's surprised when I kiss him, but I smile and tell him he doesn't ever need to compete for me. He's won me already, if he wants me.

I see the idea settle on his face, and he smiles back and tells me that we are going to be the most screwed-up couple in history.

We are that - two battle-scarred, wounded, unlovable survivors, but we have each other and that's as close to a happy ending as it gets for us.

**The End**


End file.
